Give Your Job Away

 

Life giving leaders have the ability to give leadership away.  Only a Christ confident life giving person can enthusiastically empower others to ‘take their’ job. It’s so counter intuitive when most people are trying to “get all they can, can all they get, sit on the lid and poison the rest”.  For someone to enthusiastically help others get a head at what seems like their own expense, well it’s just not normal. But life-giving Christ followers are not “normal”. We are to be like Christ and give our lives for others.

It’s called being a second mile Christ follower (Luke 6:29).  Anyone can be a one-mile advocate. This is easy because it doesn’t cost anything. Not really!

Giving others permission to fail your expense, well… that’s rare.   The second mile Christ followers are not hard to find, they standout in any organization, like my friend Steve. Too many years ago, in my twenties, Steve was a vice president at a Bank where I worked. On the first day I went to work for Steve he said to me, “Alex, there is nothing that you can mess up that I cannot fix. So have fun and enjoy the job.” I cannot tell you how empowering that was. He took total responsibility for my development and potentially at his expense.

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who…have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.” ~Henry Nouwen

Only life-giving leaders will truly empower others at that level. These leaders are not so concerned about their own well being that they are easily intimidated or fearful of the actions of the ones they are empowering.  Those who have the courage to really do this, create great leadership legacies that out live them.

One more thing, as we work ourselves out of a job by empowering others, we soon find ourselves with more opportunity than ever. Steve was the fastest promoted Vice President in the banks history.  Funny how that happens.

Be Life Giving!

Alex Anderson

Go ahead…re-post, please!